


The Rain Against His Window

by henrywinters



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Angst, M/M, Pining, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:09:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16203833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henrywinters/pseuds/henrywinters
Summary: When visiting an old friend, Kim Wonsik, a boy raised on old fashioned values, meets a man hard up on love. Over the next weeks, Wonsik is taken through the throes of harbored passion, riddled by anxieties; fearful of making all the wrong choices. But when one chooses love, can it truly be wrong?Or, alternatively, the one where conservative Wonsik falls in love with a prostitute.





	The Rain Against His Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchakyeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchakyeon/gifts).



> who is surprised by this pairing??! another c/mmission, written for the prompt: sex worker hakyeon and conservative wonsik ~ i hope i've done them justice. these are characters i hardly have the chance to write and to write them now is both exciting and nerve-wracking. pls be kind to this soft boy lmao
> 
>  
> 
> [insp. song](https://open.spotify.com/track/4BIJrDxQFNOBrar3PIOQ7P?si=zIffgZA5RzuAgq6-PwwHwA)

 

 

_With everything in me screaming, No!_

_Yet the sum of me sighed, Yes…_

— **James Baldwin**

 

 

 

 

 

I.

_There is no place lonelier than a train station. It does not matter if you are coming or going or if, perhaps, you are awaiting someone. All that matters is the steal canopy overhead blotting out all the light you cannot see; the endless curve of the tracks, reaching out and out into nowhere. It does not inspire hopefulness to see those infinite roads, for they are going not where you are and nowhere you want to be. A train station is lonely for it is only a passing place. The rush of bodies and the whirring of electricity all around. These are the things Wonsik studies dispassionately as he stands alone, with leather-bound suitcase in hand. He holds a travel ticket to nowhere important and thinks of nothing but of where he is leaving. Winter has wholly arrived and it is terribly cold._

 

_When he was a boy, train stations had held a softer light. They had been places Wonsik could explore with his father’s hand within his own, kept very far from the tracks that wound and wound and went out into places he could not, for the life of him, imagine. They had been mysterious places. They had held urgency with the coming cars, all the people moving quickly, so quickly, to places unseen. And how Wonsik had admired it all. It was this admiration that he had held firmly throughout his life, traveling alone or with his friends, awaiting his Mother when she came back from the city. And the knowing that not a soul around him knew what he was there for. How he could hide behind the secrecy of his own life! It had meant so much to him then but meant none of it to him now._

 

_He stands by the tracks and awaits a sound, a smell, the vibrations of the earth beneath his feet—anything that will tell him that he will not have to stand there much longer. But he receives nothing. He feels nothing. He sits on a weathered bench near the tracks and with his hands folded tightly over the ticket between them, he waits for daylight, for a time that is not now._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Hongbin had pulled him into the city, lighted by a joy which was palpable, Wonsik had fallen in love with the sky. He had fallen for the roads and the shops and the dramatic light that glared from the tin roofs of all the small businesses. It had been a world unknown and incomparable to the infinite fields of home, where the night was very bright and the world too quiet. Here, in this odd place, he was given something new.

 

“Where are we _going_?” Wonsik laughed, held by the hand and pulled between lighted buildings that hummed like living things. All Hongbin had told him was _you’re going to love,_ absolutely _love it_.

 

“I want you to meet a friend,” Hongbin said. “He was the first person I met when I moved here.”

 

Back, Wonsik thought, when he had still been in college and Hongbin, deterred from any normalcy life had to offer him, had left town for the bright lights of a congested city.

 

“You never told me about any friend.”

 

“Because it didn’t _matter_. I never thought you’d come this far north.” He smiled all the time as they went down streets and rounded corners, coming to a road as pitch black as the night; it was there, with rose colored noses bitten by the cold, that they stepped into a bar called **bar**.

 

It was warm inside and bright as any day. A live band played a single jazz tune. All around them life had spread out and burst up into a great wave of sounds and smells and screaming laughter like children. Wonsik fell into himself, stricken with curiosity.

 

It must have been a place Hongbin had gone to often, for he was met with cheery smiles; hugs and cheek kisses and handshakes all around. And all the time, he placed a hand to Wonsik’s chest as if to prove that he was real and said, “This is my old friend.” It was at once that Wonsik was accepted. Pulled into the crowd and to the bar, he was intrigued by the strange faces around him and wondered, was this a place that truly existed? Had it been there all along? It was very hard to believe.

 

He was passed from person to person until, finally, he came to the bar and took a seat. With Hongbin beside him and all the sounds dying away as the band began to play something sweet and slow moving, he asked, “Where is your friend?”

 

“He isn’t here yet. Just wait, though, be patient.” Hongbin smiled. “Have a drink.”

 

They had many as they waited. Then the room began to tilt and the music was lovelier than Wonsik remembered it being and he was very warm and happy with laughter bubbling up every few moments at the commotion he witnessed. There was an elderly woman sat at the table in the far, darkened corner with a young man beside her; there was the bartender, gentle but cold with eyes like daggers prodding at every person who dared look at him; and so amused by it all, Wonsik could not stop watching those around him. It was like a circus of glittering dresses and long limbs, women with hair cropped short not at all like the women back home, hanging from the arms of nondescript men who appeared quite uninteresting, but were nice to look at.

 

“Are you having fun?” Hongbin asked. His cheeks were very pink and his eyes like candles.

 

Wonsik told him, “Of course, of course—aren’t you?”

 

The entrance door came open then. It opened in silence but with such great flourishing motion, it was fascinating to see. And surely, surely, the man that entered could not have been as beautiful as Wonsik believed him to be. It would have to be the alcohol that caused such a light to encase him, alcohol and the music and those surrounding him that were not nearly as handsome. It must have been everything at once, for Wonsik’s heart throbbed painfully for one, prolonged moment as the man came into the room and the room seemed to darken and all the people around him expanded out, as if pushed away by his burning light.

 

Hongbin rose up at once, excitedly. “Wait here,” and suddenly, the man was no longer such a beacon of light but simply a man in a room as the world came close together again and Hongbin, rushing up to him, embraced him like a dear, old friend.

 

They came to the bar where Wonsik sat. And he felt his hands become sticky as he sweltered in his sweater-vest. His eyes unfocused, then focused again, then came undone and he could not look squarely at anything.

 

“Wonsik,” Hongbin took his hand brightly, proudly, “this is Hakyeon.”

 

He smiled and nodded, afraid to take Hakyeon’s hand when it was offered. But he did so anyway, able to tell the twitch of Hakyeon’s face was because of the terrible, sweaty way his hand felt.

 

“I would have came sooner,” Hakyeon said in soft apology. “Why didn’t you call?”

 

“Would you have answered?” Hongbin said.

 

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have.”

 

Wonsik watched them talk with growing fondness. It was obvious in the way they laughed together, not with sound but with their eyes, that they were close. Close enough, it seemed, to entwine their fingers beneath the bar. But of course, Wonsik thought, for Hakyeon was beautiful—beautiful in a way that he had never seen. He deflated.

 

“Listen,” Hakyeon said to the both of them, “I’m going to say hello to a few people, then we can get out of here.” He smiled with his eyes, a hand cupping his mouth as if in secrecy. “I won’t be very long.”

 

Wonsik watched him go as Hongbin turned away and ordered a glass of water.

 

He said, “What do you think?” twirling the straw and upsetting the ice. It chimed like glass trinkets.

 

“I think he’s lovely.”

 

“Isn’t he?”

 

Wonsik touched his face. Hidden behind his hand as if not wanting to be heard, he asked: “How close are you?”

 

“He was my first friend here, so—well, I guess, pretty close.”

 

Wonsik nodded and turned away.

 

“All right,” Hakyeon said, some time later, flushed with the bar’s warmth. “Where should we go?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They left the city in a hailed cab and drove all the way down, where the buildings became sparse and spaced far apart, where skeletal trees with their leaves dusting the floor, swept up by the cold and pushed out into the gutters, stood as great, reaching arms up into the wind; it was another world entirely, different from all the others Wonsik had seen; and mesmerized, he watched out the window, terribly aware of Hakyeon’s shoulder pressed against his own.

 

“Are you moving here too?” Hakyeon asked him.

 

“No, only visiting.”

 

“For how long?”

 

Wonsik looked from the window to Hakyeon’s face and immediately shied away. His eyes were as open as windows, clear glass looking in on something intimate. “Two weeks.”

 

“Oh, that isn’t long at all!”

 

“Maybe he’ll stay longer,” Hongbin said. “If he enjoys it here.” He looked to Wonsik. “Right?”

 

“Right.”

 

All the time Wonsik did not look away from Hakyeon who did not look away from him in return.

 

They stopped at a restaurant at the edge of town, where the lighted sign hummed alive. **24-hours** it said. It was quite different from **bar**. It was a place made like a home; smelling of dried leaves and the cold, where a fire burned lowly in a far off corner. The heat did not penetrate the whole room and left most of it shrouded in cold. Wonsik huddled into himself, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders lifted up around his ears.

 

“You’ll get used to it,” Hakyeon said. “It’s always cold here.”

 

The tables and all the chairs were made of dark wood and smelled like lingering earth. Wonsik touched the table and felt the grains of the wood, then touched his face and could smell it on him. It was like a place made entirely of the living. But it was the patrons that failed to look alive. Tired men and aged women, none of them speaking above a light whisper. There was no music, only the crackling of the grill and the glass cups tinkling like bells.

 

Sat between Wonsik and Hongbin, Hakyeon crossed his legs and leaned his elbows on the table. With his chin in his hand and his eyes on Wonsik, he said, “So what do you do?”

 

Hongbin lifted his hand for the waiter to come.

 

“I don’t do much,” Wonsik said lowly. A shame blossomed inside him he knew he should not feel, and so burying it low, he said, even quieter: “I’m a farmhand. For my Father.”

 

“A country boy,” Hakyeon admired.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Can I see your hands?”

 

With great determination to keep them steady, Wonsik placed his hands on the table. He startled when Hakyeon touched them. His own hands were tender, soft as cotton and very cold.

 

“You work often, don’t you?” he asked. “You have awfully masculine hands.”

 

The waiter brought coffee and martinis—exactly what Hongbin had ordered; and together, the three of them talked far into the night and into the morning, about the countryside and about the city. They talked about the cold that came into your bones in the dead of night and winter, that was so very near one could taste it on the wind; and how lovely it was to be in a place that was never very quiet. You didn’t have to think so much that way, Hakyeon said neither sadly or with charm. He said it simply to say it because he had meant it and it was true in a way Wonsik was beginning to learn. When the world was alive, there was no room for oneself.

 

“Should we get going?” Hongbin asked.

 

“Oh, but it’s late enough to order breakfast,” Hakyeon said. “Let’s have something to eat.” He looked to Wonsik. “What do you say?”

 

“I say all right.”

 

Hongbin rose up with his eyes on the time and his head elsewhere. “Look, I’ve got work in a couple hours. I’ll take the cab back, you two can get something to eat and I’ll meet up with you later.”

 

“Are you sure?” Hakyeon said.

 

Wonsik grew alarmed. He would not know the way back to the apartment.

 

“Don’t worry,” Hakyeon promised. “I live down the road. You can stay with me if you’d like and we’ll take a car back later.”

 

To Hongbin, Wonsik asked, “You don’t care? Not at all?”

 

“Why would I?” It was a very honest question. He touched Wonsik’s shoulder and said good-night.

 

“He really won’t mind?” Wonsik pestered lightly. He thought of their hands entwined beneath the bar and thought, with his face warming, of his excitement to be with Hakyeon alone and felt that same, bubbling shame from before.

 

“It’d be silly if he cared,” was Hakyeon’s disinterested reply. “I mean,” and he laughed softly, “do _you_ care? If you don’t want to stay. . .”

 

“I do.”

 

Hakyeon brimmed with color. “Then, stay.”

 

They stayed well over an hour longer; and how wonderful it was, Wonsik thought, to be alone with someone completely new and not feel the slightest bit of strangeness. Hakyeon was delightfully calm with a smile that thawed even the cold inside Wonsik’s bones. He thought he could sit there forever and listen to Hakyeon speak, though he did not disclose any information about himself. He spoke only of the things around him, the things he had done when he was younger; how he had lived all his life in the bustling city and how, even if he was to ever leave, he would dream of those nocturnal lights always, always burning.

 

“Why don’t we go now? I’ll show you my room.”

 

It was an odd thing to say, but no longer odd once Wonsik saw what Hakyeon meant. He, very seriously, lived in a room. It was a large, wide room with central heating and a bed the size of a small car. Bookshelves lined all the walls, though it was not always books placed upon them. Clothes and trinkets and plants half-dead in the dreary gloom of a room that did not get quite enough light were spaced apart over countless shelves. There was the smell of coffee and damp soil with the window open, looking out onto a vast greying sky.

 

“Go ahead and kick off your shoes. Get comfortable.”

 

Hakyeon went over to the bed and sat amid messy sheets. An ashtray was on the bedside table, filled with old cigarette filters and burned matches. Not one cigarette was the same.

 

Wonsik walked the room, feeling largely out of place for the first time that night. He said, “Hongbin said he met you when he first moved here.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“How did you meet?”

 

Hakyeon eyed him curiously, dark hair limp from the time in the cold, dark eyes darkening ever more. “He didn’t tell you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Maybe he didn’t want you to know.”

 

A spark of hurt touched Wonsik deeply. “I’ve never known him to keep things from me. Is it really that big a deal?”

 

“I don’t know. I guess it isn’t something you tell other people all the time.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Hakyeon lighted a half-smoked cigarette. He inspected it carefully as if deciding something, then put it out again. “He was lonely. He didn’t know anyone and I think, if he had known someone, at least one other person, he would have never come to me.”

 

Wonsik lowered himself into a chair in the corner, tucked between bookshelves of varying height. “It isn’t shameful to be lonely.”

 

“You’re right. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he just didn’t think to tell you because it doesn’t matter”

 

Wonsik waited, hoping Hakyeon would speak further, but when he didn’t, he let the time pass and all the opportunities of inquiry to pass with it.

 

“Why don’t you come here?” Hakyeon said softly. He touched the bed. “It won’t be comfortable to sleep in a chair.”

 

“Oh. . .” Fear gripped him at once. “It’s all right. I can, well, maybe I can sleep on the floor.”

 

“Really?” Hakyeon laughed. “It isn’t like anything will happen, you know. It’s only a bed.”

 

“But what about you and Hongbin?” He paused, panicking. “If you and Hongbin and then, then me and you—” He motioned to the bed. “We can’t share a bed, can we? I mean, that isn’t _right_ , is it?”

 

It was quite a while before Hakyeon spoke up. And all the time Wonsik feared and feared and he worried he had said precisely the wrong thing.

 

Then, with ease, Hakyeon explained: “I don’t have feelings for Hongbin, if that’s what you think. All the times I was ever with him was because he hired me to be. I can’t very well have feelings for work, can I?”

 

Wonsik continued to stare, confounded.

 

Hakyeon said: “You understand, don’t you? Besides, Hongbin and I—we don’t do anything of that sort anymore. It’s been a long time since he’s come to me for that.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Hakyeon tilted his head. “I told you. Hongbin was lonely when I met him.”

 

“He paid you to keep him company? People _pay_ you for that?”

 

“Well, they pay me for all sorts of things. But Hongbin doesn’t pay me now, you have to understand that.” Hakyeon’s voice rose gently as if climbing up some large scale. “It was a long time ago. _Years_ ago.”

 

It struck Wonsik quite like a blow. It came up and reared its head and understanding fell onto him and he said with a suddenness, with his voice loud with disbelief, “You’re a _prostitute_?”

 

“ _Don’t_ say it like that!”

 

Wonsik rubbed his mouth, feeling, quite suddenly, that the room was not big enough. There was nowhere to look but at the wall above Hakyeon’s head, the shelves surrounding them both. With nowhere to look, he could not lift his eyes from the floor. He thought of Hongbin and Hakyeon’s hands again, together under the bar; he thought of them together, in other ways, and began to drown in feverish shame. He bolted upright, upsetting a book and wincing as it fell to the carpet.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said with haste. “I didn’t know.”

 

“Why would you?”

 

“I mean, well, I mean that I didn’t even think that. . .”

 

“That, what? That we exist?” He laughed, but it was a contemptuous sound. “As if there are no prostitutes in the countryside.”

 

“None I’ve met! I don’t just—I don’t go around often, I don’t _know_. You don’t have to sound so _angry_.”

 

“I sound  _angry_?”

 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Wonsik said, defeated, and feeling ill. He sat heavily in the chair, his head in his hands, unable to decide what it was that bothered him. It was true: he had never known a prostitute before and, however mad it was to imagine so, he had not given thought that they were a people that existed before now. But even knowing what he now knew he still wanted to be near Hakyeon—and how strange that was to him at once! Hakyeon, who made his living off charming men, giving them a sense of self, doing exactly to Wonsik what Wonsik imagined he did to all others.

 

“Oh, God,” he whispered, too quietly to be heard, even in the quiet of that forsaken room. “I just didn’t think,” he said again, louder, hoping Hakyeon would understand. “I didn’t mean to sound so rude.”

 

“It’s all right.” Hakyeon came to the chair and crouched low, with his face turned upright to look Wonsik in the eye. He said, “Why don’t you come lie down? It’s late. You’re losing your head because you’re tired.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Come to the bed.”

 

“No—I, I really can’t.”

 

“Because of what I do?” Hakyeon challenged lightly.

 

“No. Because I’ve never slept in a bed with someone. Because I don’t think it’s right, unless you love them.”

 

Hakyeon stood. “You’re a strange man.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“You are. For someone in the city.”

 

The late hour had made sleep easy to find. It came nearly at once when Wonsik’s head had touched the floor, his body covered by a moth eaten blanket he did not mind having. It had taken much coaxing to convince Hakyeon that _no, no_ he did not need to sleep on the floor too; it was all right, Wonsik could manage alone, because it was not the bed that scared Wonsik, but rather the sleeping beside another. Then, by nightfall, they were up and out of the room, out on the street where winter settled heavily over the rooftops in a visible haze, able to be felt with the warmth of ones hands.

 

“Are you going back to the bar?” Wonsik asked, hands in his pockets, unable to shield himself from the wind.

 

“Yes. I have to work,” Hakyeon said, quietly. “What will you do?”

 

“Bathe,” laughed Wonsik. “Eat something.”

 

“Good. Take care of yourself.”

 

Wonsik stopped beside the cab that awaited them. “Thank you,” he said. “For letting me stay with you.”

 

He liked the way Hakyeon smiled at that. With the barest lift of his mouth, but his eyes alight with something new. “That’s all right. You can stay anytime you’re around. It’s nice to have someone to talk to. Normal conversation, you know?”

 

But all the time as they came back to the city, not a word was spoken. It was as if they feared breaking what truce they had placed between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was difficult, then, for Wonsik to keep himself in Hongbin’s apartment, where the noise from the street came like thunderstorms through the paper-thin walls. Lights from passing cars and all the laughter of the people abound. So it was not with much surprise that he pulled Hongbin from the apartment a little before midnight, excited by the prospect of seeing Hakyeon again.

 

“He’s good company, isn’t he?” Hongbin smiled.

 

It was with great care that, fighting the urge to explain that _yes,_ Hakyeon was lovely company, but not in the way that Hongbin had found him to be before, Wonsik kept quiet and did not say a word.

 

They stopped at **bar** and did not find him. So went to another and found only an empty room.

 

“He’ll show later,” Hongbin was sure.

 

“Really, why didn’t you tell me about him?”

 

“Do you tell me about everyone you meet back home?”

 

Wonsik paused, only a moment. “You already know everyone back home.”

 

“I guess you’re right.”

 

“Were you embarrassed to tell me?”

 

Hongbin, who had made it quite a spectacle to look at his drink and nothing else, looked up sharply and said, “What did he tell you?”

 

“Nothing, really.”

 

“But he told you something.”

 

“Only that you both needed a friend—really, don’t, don’t get upset.” Wonsik thrust himself forward, pressing his face all but against Hongbin’s own. “And don’t tell him I said anything.”

 

“What,” Hongbin laughed, “are you afraid he’ll be angry with you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He settled. With his chin in his hand and his drink in the other, he asked, rather carelessly, as if finding a humor in it all: “You like him, don’t you?”

 

“I don’t know him.”

 

“But you like him all the same.”

 

His forehead creased deeply, Wonsik pulled away at once. “Don’t say things like that. I don’t want him to think the wrong things.”

 

“He probably already thinks them.” It was difficult to tell if Hongbin was simply joking or if, by some absurd assumption, Hakyeon really did think this way. “There are worse things than liking someone like him.”

 

He did not say anything else. And in the short time that followed, it was apparent he was not going to speak again.

 

Time went on that way and Hakyeon did not show, so at half one that morning, Hongbin decided he was not going to wait around anymore. “Will you come home with me?”

 

“I’ll stay a little longer.”

 

Hongbin nodded, as if already knowing what Wonsik would say. “And you’ll be able to find your way back all right?”

 

“Just fine.”

 

He placed a hand on the back of Wonsik’s head and, saying good-by, paid the bill.

 

But it was terribly lonely there, in that bar, where Wonsik had not been before. He was sure, in a way that he could not explain, that Hakyeon would not show there to-night. So he collected his jacket and the cap he had brought to protect him from the cold, and went out on the street that was shrouded in night, not a star in the sky; there was but the lonesome phosphoric glow of all the streetlamps up either side of the road.

 

He came back to **bar** but could hear the noise from beyond the door, deciding then that he did not want to be a part of it to-night. Swimmy in the head with his feet not quite on the ground, he was light all over as if he had suffered a great blow. He leaned against the building and watched that endless, black blanket of sky, wondering why it was the city had lost its spark so quickly in the night.

 

“Deep in thought?”

 

Wonsik came to attention. He smiled. “Hi.”

 

Hakyeon smiled in return. “What are you doing out here?”

 

“Waiting for you.”

 

“Me?” Was there a blush across his face because of Wonsik, or because of the cold? Or, perhaps, because of both. Yes—Wonsik thought, because of both. His heart jumped up with a terrible thrust. “Do you want to go inside?”

 

“Not really.”

 

Hakyeon stood beside him. His body was warm and his smile warmer; the deep, dark pools of his eyes reflected all the phosphor from the street, creating in them a cesspool of light. He put his hand in the bend of Wonsik’s elbow and said, “Want to walk?”

 

So late in the night, but not tired at all, Wonsik felt a thrill come into him. He stood not at all taller than Hakyeon, but with all his bones stretched upward and his head held very tall, he could pretend that he was. He followed Hakyeon who led them between buildings, where the once purple of winding wisteria was now a terrible brown, dead against the red brick of all the bars. They came to pass open restaurants, apartments with windows shut up and all the lights turned out. And all the time they spoke softly, for there was no sound anymore as the city lay its head to rest.

 

Hakyeon, quietly, asked: “Why did you come looking for me?”

 

“Because I wanted to.”

 

“Were you thinking of me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

They stopped between buildings where the light from the streets did not touch.

 

“Why’s that?” Hakyeon asked.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“What were you thinking about?”

 

Wonsik watched the ground, unable to watch anything else. “I thought of the way I acted in the morning. I was afraid I had made you feel bad.”

 

Hakyeon touched his arm and then his shoulder. He pulled his hand away as if afraid of offending him. “Don’t worry about that anymore. I was tired, I don’t know _why_ I took offense when I did.”

 

“So I didn’t hurt your feelings?”

 

“Maybe a little. But not anymore.”

 

Wonsik nodded, not feeling any better. He continued to stare at the ground as he felt Hakyeon stare into him. And he felt the press of Hakyeon’s hand against his chest, slipping down and down until his waist and then gone from his body as he stood there, arms at his sides, watching Wonsik curiously.

 

“Wonsik”—he looked up—“do you want to come home with me again?”

 

“Oh. . . I, should I?”

 

“If you want to.”

 

“Aren’t we far from your room?”

 

Hakyeon nodded. “We are.”

 

“But I can come anyway?”

 

Hakyeon stepped forward. “I’d like it if you did.” He laid his hands on either of Wonsik’s shoulders, pressing close, his face so near Wonsik could not see anything but the black of his eyes.

 

“Have you ever slept with anyone before?” Hakyeon whispered, so close he did not have to speak to be heard. It was all in his eyes and the curve of his mouth: how badly he wanted Wonsik to draw nearer. But Wonsik could not bring himself to do it.

 

“No.” He shied away, growing nerves like burning fires in the tips of his fingers. There was an urge, very new, very strange, to reach out and to hold; but how could he? When, at the thought alone, he felt inadequate.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because, that’s. . .something you do with the person you love. Who you’re going to marry.”

 

Hakyeon smiled. “Have you kissed anyone, at least?” But it was obvious in the way Wonsik lowered his head, his dark hair falling in waves across his forehead as if shielding him from further questioning, that _no—no_ , he had never kissed a soul.

 

It was with deliberate care, hands so gentle Wonsik did not, at first, feel them against his face, that Hakyeon touched him and drew him close. He did not have to coax Wonsik more than a moment, for the cold was pressing in and the wind was rising and all the light that did not reach them burned like something fervent and alive, so that Wonsik, with fear inside him urging him on, found his eyes closed and the press of Hakyeon’s mouth against his own.

 

He was unresponsive at first. He did not know what to do. But with Hakyeon holding him tightly, hands as heavy as iron but petal soft against him, Wonsik was able to careen forward. He gripped Hakyeon in an awkward embrace, his feet planted firmly on the ground as if he feared floating away. All the time, his heart near bursting inside him. He did not feel the cold. He felt nothing but the squeeze of his heart and of his eyes as he kissed and was kissed in return. Then—Wonsik pulled away.

 

They stood, watching one another in the dark, for what felt like a very long time. With his hand offered, Hakyeon whispered: “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The very next morning, Wonsik fell in love. As he was roused from a sleep much deeper than he could ever remember before, he found Hakyeon beside him, knelt on the ground and leaning forward as if to kiss him the moment Wonsik wakened. But he did not kiss him right away as Wonsik, burning to be kissed again, had hoped. Instead, Hakyeon had lingered there, admiring his sleep softened face, tracing the faint lines across his forehead where anxiety plagued him deeply. Then he laid his head against Wonsik’s chest, and so close that way, with their bodies pressed tightly together, Wonsik wrapped his arm around Hakyeon’s body and felt his heart soar.

 

“Shall we run away today?” said Hakyeon. “Grab something to eat and never go into the city at all?”

 

Wonsik smiled at the thought. “No,” he said. “Let’s stay right here.” And he meant it, there: on the floor, with his arms around Hakyeon, never to let go.

 

“Don’t be boring.”

 

“It isn’t boring,” Wonsik said. He had never felt another person’s heart so close before.

 

Hakyeon laid down beside him, their heads on the same pillow, with no space between them. He said, “All right. We’ll stay here and be bums today. But we’ll have to leave, you know, to get something to eat.”

 

“But not yet.”

 

He touched Wonsik’s hair, brushing it out of his red-rimmed and very tired eyes. “Sure. Later, then.” He kissed Wonsik’s nose and they slept again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What happened then did not happen gradually at all, but rather lifted up into the sky, shot like a flare. It sparked and the world sparked with it. The colors of the night spread out alive and all the days which followed came in cold, shocking sensations like a heart dropped into one’s belly.

 

Wonsik would see Hongbin only once more before the end, but in the time that Hakyeon was not home—out in the city, across the way, doing what Wonsik would never imagine on his own—he would sit on the telephone, laughing as Hongbin tried, with desperation, to figure out what Wonsik could possibly be doing there.

 

“I know he’s great, but I—” Hongbin laughed over the phone line. “I would have never thought. Not in a million years.”

 

“Don’t think so much. Don’t think at all! I don’t want you thinking.”

 

Hongbin laughed again; a sweetly contagious sound. “Come out to-night.”

 

“I still don’t know how to get there.”

 

“You’re _awful_. In every way.”

 

“Maybe tomorrow. Or the night after. I’ll have to ask Hakyeon what he’s doing those days.”

 

“Oh,” Hongbin said, carelessly, “you know what he’s doing.”

 

“Better not to think about it.” But already, a pain had seized up in his belly and forced Wonsik, breathless with dismay, to cut the call short. He said he would call again, maybe in the morning, and then said good-night.

 

Once alone and in the quiet, he lay back on Hakyeon’s bed on the side he slept the most, and felt with his hands the divots in the mattress that showed where his body went. Wonsik lay down in the same spot, his face pressed into the pillows, giddy with a love, a desire, he did not know; he felt it all over him, so intense it was painful. Slipped under the blankets, he held the pillow to his chest, his head on the mattress and his eyes shut very tight against the light of the window; and as he lay that way, his hands roamed the bed the way he imagined they would have roamed Hakyeon had he been there beside him. It was the first time his mind had wandered so deeply into himself that with a start, he sat up, afraid of the way his throat tightened at the smell of Hakyeon’s cologne. He wanted badly—so badly—to love him and to love him deeply; he wanted to hold him again and kiss him again just as they had only hours before, as they did every morning now. It seemed all Wonsik could think of anymore was the next kiss and the next after that. But Hakyeon was not his to-night and the revelation of this brought a pain deeper than heartache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was late in the night when Hakyeon returned. But Wonsik, alone in the room, fiddling with the blankets and the books, turning pages that did not matter for he did not read any written word upon them, stood at once as if rejuvenated by the sight of him.

 

Hakyeon laughed. “Did you wait up for me?”

 

“Would it be bad if I did?”

 

“No, no.” Hakyeon opened his arms. “Come here.”

 

Wonsik came and laid his head against Hakyeon’s shoulder. He inhaled him without shame and lifted him up to his chest, holding every part of him as if holding a small star. He wanted to ask if the night had been nice, had he been treated well at least?, but he could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he put his mouth to Hakyeon’s mouth, never thinking that perhaps someone else had done just this only hours before, and kissed him with his face burning of color and heat, his body trembling beneath the desires he so deeply felt.

 

“In the morning,” Hakyeon said, “we’ll do whatever you want. But I know,” he looked over at the bed, surely noticing the mess of blankets not at all like he had left them, “that you don’t like to do much.”

 

“Just as long as whatever it is, I can do it with you.”

 

“Yes,” Hakyeon breathed quietly. He went over to the bed and touched the blankets, a small smile dimpling the corners of his mouth. “Did you sleep here?”

 

Wonsik startled from his side of the room. “Only for a moment.”

 

“Do you want to sleep here to-night?” Hakyeon lowered himself onto the bed. “With me?”

 

Wonsik could not stare so intently into Hakyeon’s face as Hakyeon did to him, always unblinking, unnerved, as if able to read the thoughts that lingered just behind Wonsik’s open eyes. He feared if he stared for too long Hakyeon would know what he had imagined that evening. As he had lain on the bed with his body taunt and all the blood rushing into him. He had not touched himself as he had wanted to, but had pressed his body close to the pillow, able then to feel an ease inside him. He could not risk Hakyeon knowing such a thing had happened.

 

Wonsik walked back the chair he had sat in most of the night and fell into it, a hand on his face, rubbing, rubbing, incessantly.

 

“Wonsik?” Hakyeon drew closer, his voice even and gentle and his hand outstretched to lay upon Wonsik’s arm. “Do you want to sleep with me? It’s all right if you do.”

 

Wonsik would not look at him. Soon, he felt the drawing heat of Hakyeon’s body as he lowered himself into his lap. Sat together in the chair between shelves, Hakyeon took Wonsik’s face into his hands.

 

“What is it?” he whispered.

 

At once, without thought, Wonsik demanded to know: “Did you think of me to-night?”

 

It was obvious just how put-off Hakyeon felt. “Well, yes.”

 

“When you were with those other men?”

 

“Oh—Don’t think that way.”

 

“I’m sorry.” He lifted Hakyeon out of his lap. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

 

“Wonsik.”

 

He paused. “Yes?”

 

“If you _did_ sleep in the bed with me, you would be the first person I ever shared it with.” He tilted his head. He was painfully small, standing there, in the middle of that dim room.

 

How was it, Wonsik wondered, that a simple remark such as this could have lifted all the ugly feeling that settled over him? Hakyeon must have seen the change, for he came closer again, falling back into Wonsik’s arms as if knowing this time he would not be denied. “Okay?”

 

Wonsik nodded.

 

“Do you want to sleep with me?”

 

Wonsik nodded again. But his body, so deeply flushed, could not be removed from the chair. He sat with all his weight, afraid to rise for he was scared and he was shy, but his body did not entail either of those things. It gave away how close he wanted Hakyeon to be. In the way his palms began to perspire, to the pain in his belly as his insides wound around themselves; to how, between his legs, heat pooled.

 

“Why, why don’t you get ready for bed?” Wonsik said. “And I’ll get ready out here.”

 

“All right,” Hakyeon smiled. “I won’t take long.”

 

And as the water ran in the bathroom, Wonsik ran, as well, across the room to where his belongings lay in a heap on the floor. He threw himself into the first trousers he could find—sleep appropriate and cotton soft, but awful at hiding his traitorous body—and then threw himself into bed.

 

When Hakyeon came out, he found Wonsik, asleep on his belly, his face in the pillows. And with a kiss to Wonsik’s ear, he said good-night against his hair, whispering kindly to him, “Don’t wait up anymore. You’re always tired when you do.”

 

But later, after Hakyeon had fallen asleep, Wonsik lifted his head and looked over at him, beautiful in the weak light of coming dawn. He lay his arm across Hakyeon’s middle and held him in sleep the way he would like to hold him always.

 

 

 

 

 

II.

_It is late enough now that light filters through the cracks in the canopy. A ghost light falling in streams over the tracks. Wonsik has not moved from the weathered bench in all the time that has passed. He has not stopped watching the coming of the trains, none of them the one he awaits. He has realized early on that to be alone is the worst thing he could do to himself. He can see, too clearly, the things he has left behind: the solid, brown carpet of Hakyeon’s room and the writing desk he never touched in all the time Wonsik had been there. The light from the canopy is quite like the light that had come from the window each morning as winter moved ever closer. He wonders if dawn will always remind him of the dawns spent in that room, for now they are cold comings of days he does not want to face when before they had been warm and full of other things; love and the quiet and the smell of the sheets that smelled of nothing but Hakyeon._

 

_“Sir?”_

 

_Wonsik looks up into the face of a passing security guard. He hands over the ticket without word._

 

_After inspecting it for a short time, the man tells him: “A bit early, aren’t you?” He gives the ticket back. “Better than late, I suppose.” He continues along the tracks, eyes everywhere at once. Wonsik watches him. There is a shuffle about his feet and an unsteady way that his legs carry him. He watches, and tries very hard not to think._

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was on an unseasonably warmer day, where the light came golden and sweet into the room, that Wonsik tried with acute desperation to fit himself into a pair of Hakyeon’s trousers. Hakyeon, sat in the chair across the room, watched him, smiling all the time.

 

“They’re too small,” said Wonsik.

 

“Oh, they aren’t bad.”

 

Wonsik extended one leg to show his exposed ankle. “Really?” He was touched by the way Hakyeon laughed. He laughed with his whole body: head tipped back, a hand over his mouth to stifle those small, timid giggles. He was beautiful that way, with his neck extended and his hair like feathering waves swept over his eyes.

 

“Honestly, you’re _fine_. Just roll them and we’ll find you new trousers while we’re out.”

 

“Or we can take what I already have to the laundromat and not buy anything at all.”

 

“But that isn’t _fun_. Who wants to do _laundry_ on a day like to-day?” He motioned to the window, bright with midday light, as if to prove his point. And prove it it did. Wonsik rolled the trousers and did not mention them again as he came across the room to crouch beside the chair.

 

Hakyeon had been reading. He set the book aside in favor of Wonsik’s head in his lap. He fingers were thin and cold as they brushed through the back of Wonsik’s hair. His touch was soft. His voice even softer as he said, “Do you want to get a coffee with me?”

 

Wonsik nodded with his head in Hakyeon’s hands.

 

The cafe they walked to was one they had passed many times on their evening walks. It was a small, warm place where the walls were light brown and the floors made of tiled brick. The woman that worked there spoke more French than Korean and tried, with mild success, to take their order. And once with coffee, they sat together in a shaded corner beside a window that looked out across the street to a large cathedral that stood as insurmountable as any deity.

 

Sat across one another, Wonsik watched Hakyeon as he felt a disturbance against his foot and then his ankle. It was the toe of Hakyeon’s boot pushing up the cuffs of the trousers and he: smiling as he did it.

 

It was no longer a question of when Wonsik would leave. After the first morning together, wrapped in each other on the cold, soft floor, Hakyeon had never asked if Wonsik would stay again, for Wonsik did not want to leave and made it apparent by keeping himself as close to Hakyeon’s side as possible. It was because of this that Hakyeon reached over the cafe table and asked, nonplussed, what they would do with all their time together? He was beginning to forget what it was like to be alone.

 

“I don’t care what we do,” said Wonsik.

 

“Oh, I know _that_.”

 

“I just want to talk with you.”

 

Hakyeon watched him closely. “About what?”

 

“Anything you want to share with me.” Wonsik touched Hakyeon’s foot with his foot and his hand with his hand. “Like, where are your parents?”

 

“They left.”

 

“You mean, they left you?”

 

There came a considerable silence and then, “No,” Hakyeon said. “I can’t really say they did. They wanted me to go with them, but I didn’t want to. So they left for Vietnam.” He took a drink, wiped his upper lip on the back of a napkin. “I hear from them sometimes.”

 

“Do you ever see them?”

 

“No.”

 

Wonsik watched him curiously. He wondered if Hakyeon ever called them, or if it was better not to. He thought of the room with Hakyeon’s whole life inside it and how it all fit, rather nicely, in such a small space. Had they left him with only what they could not take, or had he built up his life on his own? Wonsik thought it all and asked none of it. Rather, he said, “I’ve been to Vietnam. It’s nice there. I mean, there’s, like, a lot of farmland and that’s always nice. Isn’t it?”

 

Hakyeon brightened at his attempt. He was charmed, it was obvious, and he squeezed Wonsik’s fingers inside his hand. “Do you like being a farmhand?”

 

“Sure. It’s fine.”

 

“Do you think you’ll do it forever?”

 

“Aren’t I too young to think of forever?”

 

“Well, I don’t know. Are you?”

 

Wonsik considered, then shook his head. “I don’t know what I’ll do forever. I guess I’ll keep doing what I do for now.”

 

Hakyeon took his hand and turned it over on the table, so that it lay palm up. He spoke fondly as he ran his fingers across his weathered palms. “I can’t imagine you without your calloused hands.”

 

Wonsik blushed. “Is that a good thing?”

 

“Sure. I like them. Quite a lot, actually.” Hakyeon’s eyes glittered brightly, almost mischievously, as he brought Wonsik’s hand up to his face so that he could feel the roughened palm against his cheek. “I’ve never done hard work in my life. I’m too soft for it.”

 

“I wouldn’t want you to do hard work anyway,” Wonsik said, very seriously. He was shocked by the laughter this brought on, but soon found he couldn’t look at the way Hakyeon’s face lighted up without his own heart bursting with a need to smile. “Was that stupid to say?”

 

“No, it was very sweet.”

 

“If you ever come to the countryside,” Wonsik began, “well, I don’t know. . . you’d be taken care of.”

 

Hakyeon’s laugh faded slowly, then suddenly. He sat with earnest severity, but did not say a word. All the time they watched each other, their coffee growing cold and the sun blinking out behind thick winter cloud, Hakyeon’s thumb ran in circles across the back of Wonsik’s hand.

 

Eventually, he whispered: “You’re probably the sweetest boy I know,” and it was all that was said on the matter.

 

Later, in the evening, after Wonsik had pulled himself out of Hakyeon’s trousers and into a pair of his own, they lie beside one another in the bed, watching each other. From the open window came the distant sound of music played from a nearby balcony.

 

“What will you do to-night?” Hakyeon asked.

 

Wonsik looked around the room, at the copious books and empty shelves. “Read, I guess.”

 

“Why don’t you come with me to the city? I can drop you off at Hongbin’s before going to the bars.”

 

“What,” Wonsik smiled, “you want to get rid of me?”

 

“It’d probably be best if you stayed there for to-night. Only to-night though.”

 

Wonsik’s smile fell away. “Why?”

 

“I don’t think I’ll be back home until midday tomorrow.” Wonsik could see his discomfort mirrored before him. Hakyeon sat up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “It’s only for the night. I don’t want to leave you here all night and day with nothing to do but read.”

 

“Why,” Wonsik cleared his throat. “Why can’t you stay here with me to-night instead?” It was not a question he intended to ask, but it hurt once it had been spoken and hurt in places he hated to feel. “For one night can’t you—?”

 

What burst from Hakyeon then was striking in the silence of the room. His voice, elevated and very strange as it strained under emotion, sounded like nothing Wonsik had heard before. “You _know_ I can’t stay—why do you have to say all this?”

 

“Just to say it.”

 

“Can’t you understand without having to speak out loud?”

 

Wonsik pulled away. He sat on the bed with his back to Hakyeon, feeling a rising in his throat he did not like. “I never said I didn’t understand.”

 

“But you don’t, do you? Otherwise you wouldn’t bring it up all the time.”

 

Wonsik shook his head—hard. As if shaking from it Hakyeon’s voice. He rose up and collected his coat, mildly aware of Hakyeon saying his name, telling him to sit down again— _come back_ , he said, _stop, listen—I’m sorry_.

 

Wonsik looked at Hakyeon with heedful reproach. He went to the bed and said, “Are you upset with me?”

 

“No—no, I promise, I’m not.” Hakyeon crawled over the bed and grabbed Wonsik by the waist. He rose up on his knees and pushed his mouth against Wonsik’s mouth, his neck arched gently as he held him hard and fast. “I’m sorry,” he said, never parting them.

 

It was impossible to be any closer than they were then, with each curve of their bodies pressed tightly together. Wonsik felt with his hands flat on Hakyeon’s back the arch of his spine and the tender, delicate bones from his ribs to his neck to his shoulders. He was delicate as birds wings.

 

“I would stay if I could,” Hakyeon said. “I swear it to you, I would. Do you believe me?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Tell me you do.”

 

“I do.”

 

Wonsik thought of them there, alone, all night and wondered—for it was the only time they were never really together—what they would do with all that time in the darkness. His body warmed as his mind wandered and he knew he could not take back what thoughts he had dreamed up. However, he was not so sure he would if he could.

 

It came as little surprise that his body gave away what his mind had conjured up and to stand there, with Hakyeon against his mouth, all his body small between Wonsik’s hands, did not give Wonsik a safe barrier to hide behind. Hakyeon broke away slowly and searched him. It was as if he did not quite believe what he had felt against him, or that Wonsik—perspiring beneath his shirt, but stoic as he stood there—could watch him with such a warm regard. His breath caught gently as he brought Wonsik back onto the bed, pulling him by the waist until they came together, with no space in between.

 

“Is that what the matter is?” Hakyeon whispered. “Are you jealous, Wonsik? No—Don’t roll your eyes, I’m serious. Do you not like me being intimate with other people?” His voice dropped lower, barely audible over the music through the window. “Do you love me, is that it?”

 

“I care very much about you.” Wonsik rest his head on Hakyeon’s collarbone, able even there to hear the ticking of his heart so fervent and alive between his bones. He rest his head and imagined what Hakyeon would do if he placed his hands up the cotton of his shirt. Would he bring Wonsik closer? Urge him out of his clothes? Would he touch and want to be touched and to do all the things Wonsik could not outright imagine? He recoiled inwardly, terrified by the response of his body and the blood that pumped in his head, louder than everything else. Then, without caution, he pushed his face against Hakyeon’s throat and felt with his mouth the beating of his pulse. Then he felt it with his tongue as he licked and kissed his neck, moving up to the place behind his ear as Hakyeon’s hold on the back of his shirt tightened. Wonsik heard the noise that escaped him and felt the gentle roll of Hakyeon’s hips beneath him. Overcome with sudden desire, Wonsik gasped quietly.

 

Hakyeon did not stop Wonsik’s hands from roaming. He did not let him go. He laid there, compliant and motionless, urging with his hands that Wonsik touch him lower, lower, until Wonsik’s hand brushed the inner side of Hakyeon’s thigh. He felt there the source of his own frustrations. There was heat pooling in his belly as the heat of Hakyeon’s body met his hand. And all at once, Wonsik’s head was very light as he pushed his hand down the front of those pants, grasping Hakyeon in the palm of his hand.

 

He was wet and warm and very hard. Wonsik gripped him and Hakyeon thrust up into his fist, his arms never unwinding from Wonsik’s back. But it was too much all at once. Wonsik pulled his hand away and yanked himself from the bed. He reeled back too quickly and was sick in the head, his knees weak and his body on fire.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. He lowered his tired head. “I don’t think I can.”

 

With flushed cheeks and a soft, heaving breath, Hakyeon sat on the edge of the bed with his arms extended. It did not take long for Wonsik, with trembling hands, to drop down on his knees. He laid his head in Hakyeon’s lap and let himself be caressed.

 

“I have to go anyway. It’s better not to start something we can’t finish.”

 

Feebly, feeling weak all over, Wonsik whispered: “Can’t you cancel the plans, just this one time—? Can you?” He did not ask again when Hakyeon refused to answer. Instead, he lay just that way without moving, until the time came for Hakyeon to go. Then, in the quiet, alone in a room no longer comforting but small and bereft of color as a holding cell, Wonsik lay in bed and listen to the night outside the window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had not been intended to go into the city that night, but because he could not stand the room any longer, Wonsik had telephoned Hongbin. He had asked him, with all seriousness, to meet him outside Hakyeon’s room. Did he know where Hakyeon stayed? Could he be there in an hour? Wonsik would come home with him to-night, to save being alone until midday.

 

Hongbin came in a pair of wrinkled trousers, in a shirt that smelled strongly of cologne, and stood in Hakyeon’s room as Wonsik collected the last of his things.

 

“Aren’t you coming back?” He followed Wonsik round the room. “Why do you need so much shit if you’re coming back?”

 

“I need to do laundry.”

 

They left together in a green colored cab and came into the city less than forty minutes later. The night had fallen all around and what came up out of the streets was the screaming laughter from the bars, unable to be determined if they were joyous sounds or something troubled.

 

“Are you gonna tell me what’s the matter?” asked Hongbin. “I can’t play games with you. You never make them easy.” He smiled when he spoke, but the sincerity was there, heavy in his voice. When Wonsik did not look at him, Hongbin pushed closer so that his chin rest against Wonsik’s arm.

 

“Tell me,” he said. “Please?”

 

After much silent debate, Wonsik ordered a vodka tonic and looked squarely into Hongbin’s eyes as he explained, “I don’t think I can do it, you know? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept what he does.”

 

“Did he do something?”

 

“Nothing he wouldn’t normally do. He’s out here, somewhere, right now. With some guy. He won’t be back until tomorrow and I know he expects me to be all right with it, but I’m not.” Wonsik shook his head, afraid if he talked too long about it, he would begin to imagine what Hakyeon was doing—who he was doing it to.

 

Hongbin, who had not pulled himself from Wonsik’s side, whispered against him: “Did you sleep with him?”

 

“I wanted to.”

 

“But you didn’t?”

 

“I couldn’t.”

 

He felt Hongbin nod against him as if in agreement, as if saying _yes, all right—you made the right choice_. But it did not matter how right it was, because it was not the choice he had wanted to make. All the time, he thought of Hakyeon and what it would be like to hold him as close as all the men before him were allowed to. Was he the type to kiss himself breathless? Was he loud, or terribly silent? Would he tell Wonsik he loved him at precisely the right moment—when all the world fell silent to the sound of rushing blood and the beating of his heart? It hurt him to think these were things he would never know for certain.

 

“Sleep on it,” Hongbin said. “At least in the morning your head will be cleared and you’ll feel better than you do now.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

When Hongbin did not respond, Wonsik turned to him and asked again, “How do you know that?" But it was pointless to ask.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the next few days, it went that way. Hakyeon worked most nights and did not come home until well after midday. He came tiredly, with his head full of smoke, unable to stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Then he would fall away, off to sleep, with his head on Wonsik’s shoulder and all his clothes still on. As he slept, Wonsik would go about the room and tidy what belongings had been put on the floor. He would shower and leave, returning with groceries or something from the cafe, in hopes of rousing Hakyeon with food and attention and all the time in the world to give him. But Hakyeon never did wake up until it was dark. Then, off, again, to some man in a bar across town.

 

“It’s just a busy week,” he said when Wonsik, hurt by it all, did not come out of bed to greet him. “I know you’re bored, but it won’t be much longer. A few more days, you’ll see.”

 

“I have to go back soon.”

 

Hakyeon fell silent. Across the room, Wonsik could see his shoulders shake ever so slightly. “What do you mean?”

 

“I can’t stay for ever, you know. I have to go back home.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Soon.”

 

Hakyeon came to the bed and sat at Wonsik’s feet. “When?” He reached under the blankets and placed his hand over Wonsik’s hand. He touched his arm, his shoulder. He pushed himself beneath the blankets and into Wonsik’s side. “Not very soon, right?”

 

“Very soon, yes.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I haven’t really seen you, have I?” Wonsik was not angry. He would not pretend to be either. He held Hakyeon very close, very steadily, with his cheek against Hakyeon’s temple, able to feel the rising of his pulse as he spoke aloud.

 

“Why do I feel like you’re doing this on purpose?” Hakyeon said.

 

“Don’t be dramatic.”

 

“You aren’t, are you?”

 

They spoke gently together. The window was open and above their whispers was the wind, blowing cold through the trees.

 

“Don’t ask me that,” Wonsik said, very seriously. “I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose.”

 

“But you’re leaving.”

 

“I was always going to.”

 

“Why can’t you stay?”

 

Wonsik held him tightly. “The same reason you leave me every night. I have to.”

 

“It sounds terrible when you say it like that.”

 

“But is it untrue?”

 

Hakyeon rose up from the bed and pulled Wonsik to rise with him. He said, “Come here, come here, come with me,” with his hand in Wonsik’s hand, pulling him from the bed to the bathroom. There, he ran the water and filled the tub, all the time never looking at Wonsik for longer than a moment. Then he took off his clothes and stood there, in the bright light of the bathroom, every part of him up for the taking.

 

“Give me this,” Hakyeon whispered, pulling at the hem of Wonsik’s shirt. Then he took his trousers and pulled them gently down his legs. “Your socks,” he said.

 

Wonsik took them off.

 

“Your shorts, too.”

 

“Turn around.”

 

Hakyeon turned his back, never looking as Wonsik stood trembling and naked in the middle of the room. He struggled to calm himself, burning up from the inside out as he watched Hakyeon step into the water, lowering himself with a quiet splash.

 

Wonsik came into the water and sat opposite Hakyeon in that wide, porcelain tub, he reached under the water and took Hakyeon’s foot into his hand. He smiled when Hakyeon smiled, the steam from the water dampening his hair, leaving his shoulders glittering.

 

Hakyeon opened his arms. “Let me hold you,” he said.

 

Wonsik came to him easily. With his cheek pressed against Hakyeon’s bare chest, he lay between Hakyeon’s legs, his arms wrapped around his middle. He thought Hakyeon was small, so small, he could easily wrap his arms twice around that thin middle of his. He loved too much the way Hakyeon felt naked against him. He was warm where he was dry and his heart beat deeply, with hard, thrusting bursts against Wonsik’s turned cheek.

 

“Tell me something you haven’t told anyone,” Hakyeon whispered.

 

 _Like_ , Wonsik thought, _l_ _ike, I love you—I really think I do._ But he could not find the words he badly wanted to say. In the end, he said nothing, but pressed his mouth against Hakyeon’s chest, over the place where his heart beat the most, and said with his hands what his voice could not do. He touched Hakyeon where he had been so afraid to touch before, and felt in his own body: the deep, penetrative need to be close and closer still, with each pulse of his body; every muscle twitch and leaping heart beat, he needed to be closer, closer, and even then, he did not feel close enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the night, half asleep, Wonsik felt the bed move beneath him as Hakyeon, once curled into his side, crawled from under the blankets. He kissed Wonsik’s cheek and then his mouth, whispering, for he knew Wonsik was awake, “I have to go. I’ll be back in the morning.”

 

“Stay this once.”

 

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Wonsik pulled his hand to his mouth. He kissed the palm and every finger, certain if Hakyeon understood he would not be there in the morning, he would stay. But he could not bring himself to tell Hakyeon this, for he did not want him staying out of guilt. So he kissed his hand in hopes of Hakyeon understanding. He kissed his wrist and then his mouth when, smiling, he leaned down over Wonsik with his eyes half asleep and his mind elsewhere.

 

“I’ll see you,” he said again. “All right?”

 

“All right,” said Wonsik. But he held onto him all the same, not wanting to let him go. He wished he was not a coward, that his heart—no matter how weak—could handle these endless nights alone. But again, he was there, in that dark and abysmal room, with only the wind to keep him company. It was very cold and getting colder; and how lonesome the cold was. He could not stand it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The ground begins to stir, like something come to life. It is the coming of the train. If ever there was a time to take back his cowardice, it has passed. Wonsik watches the large steal engine barrel closer, slowing, slowing, until—finally, it stops. He is not alone when he rises from the bench and he is not alone when he passes through those open doors. But he believes he may as well be, for not a soul matters but his own—and he fears he has left it back in Hakyeon’s room, where it will be kept until he has forgotten to care. Maybe, he thinks, he will come back for it._ _When it is not so cold anymore; when he can handle the weight of it all. Someday, maybe, soon._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> weeee angst! isn't it great lul btw ~ i'm not sure if i'm going to be continuing writing vixx fic for a while. with classes starting soon and a few other things taking my interest, this may be the last i post for the year. hope you all enjoyed it! *smooch*


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